And Miles To Go Before I Sleep
by CloudyDream
Summary: Elizabeth Wayne fights teeth and nails in a man's world, and ends up on top. Or, that one in which Bruce is born a girl. AU, obviously.


**A/N**: So, hello. I guess I'm back to the fandom; and I finally got over my stupid PC deleting a 70k words story I'd taken weeks to write. Oh, well. This was inspired by a tumbrl post complaining about the lack of female figures in superhero movies, and it's my way for me to feel comfortable writing the characters. I might turn it into a two-shots but, for now, I hope it works!

* * *

**And Miles To Go Before I Sleep**

* * *

She is born on a golden September evening, much wanted and long awaited; the world hers for the taking.

She is born a girl and dressed in white satin and pink ribbons, beautiful and delicate in her mother's arms, her father's pride and joy. Her birth was a long, messy affair, fifty-five hours in all; had circumstances been different, Martha would have sworn to never go through anything like that again. She is born a girl however; and this is why, after a couple of years, she tells her husband, _maybe_…

So, maybe her parents still wish for a boy but, still, they have _time_.

She is born a girl, and that is not to say she is not loved. Elizabeth Wayne is loved by everyone, from the day of her christening, when she was presented to the world in her small white christening dress on the steps of Gotham's old Cathedral.

So, maybe her parents still wish for a boy but, in the end, it doesn't make a difference, for now; and Thomas and Martha Wayne don't seem to care. Is the rest of the world that does.

At two she is already running everywhere, in her white stockings and black Mary Jane's. The ribbons are red now, on her curls rather than her clothes, and they go so nicely with her raven hair. _You look like Snow White, darling_, Martha tells her, and Beth loves it.

Beth will grow up to hate Snow White, the poor helpless maiden asleep in her crystal coffin, waiting for her prince to kiss her back to life. She will hate the story and the name and everything behind it, the way it tarnished one of her most precious childhood memories; but she is three years old now, and she wants to be Snow White when she grows up.

She is four when she learns to read, and her first book is one of fairytales that she likes to bring into her father's study, to watch him when he works. She is five when she takes on one of Thomas's anatomy books from university, and giving up the moment she reads the first line; but she keeps on turning the pages and looking at the pictures. They are scary and kind of disgusting, but in a good way.

Elizabeth Wayne is six years old when she meets Rachel Dawes, and it's weird at first because she doesn't usually like other girls. They are snotty and boring and play all the time at jumping the rope, which Beth somehow never managed to learn, and she thinks she likes boys much better anyways; but in the end they become friends. They are both shy and quiet at first, but soon enough they're running in the gardens of the Manor for hours on end.

When Beth is seven years old a lot of things happen, but in hindsight she doesn't really remember; because they are all lost in the terrible memories from when she's eight.

Beth doesn't like to remember those years.

* * *

Thomas and Martha Wayne die like they lived, under the watching eyes of the whole city; and Beth _hates_ that with a burning passion. It's like they aren't her parents anymore; in the day of her death, they belong to the city.

Gotham is a jealous mistress, and doesn't share.

She never said a word, and only Alfred knew about the bats.

They send her to all sort of psychiatrists at first, that one the Police Commissioner recommended and that other one after she spat on Jessica Davis's face, even though she _totally deserved_ it, because she wouldn't talk to Alfred and maybe he was a little concerned. And scared too; no one ever said it clearly to Beth but many people at Child Protective Services thought she ought to live with someone else who wasn't the butler. She deserved the life and the education her parents would have given her, after all, and many families had offered; some even had children her age.

Somehow, the children always are boys.

She never told anyone much; not the first one nor the second and nor the sixth, and after that there were no more. Alfred knew about the well in the garden, of course, and so did Rachel; but Alfred didn't talk and Beth didn't see Rachel much anymore, not since Alfred had closed all the Manor but one wing, and found Rachel's mom another job at Beth's old private school but, by then, Beth had gone to boarding school in Pennsylvania.

After all, it wouldn't do for Gotham Academy to admit they'd kicked out a Wayne.

Alfred remembers and how scared Beth had been that day in the garden, and if he ever put two and two together, read Beth's shame in her eyes and realized how she'd _chickened out_, how she'd _killed_ her parents…

As the years go by, Beth is sure Alfred understands her a lot better than he lets on, but he never tries to talk her, and she is glad.

In the end, she never had to explain anything to anyone, and she is thankful for that. There was the police that first night, but no one after. Even at the funeral, all of her parents' friends were more interested in cooing around her and glaring at Alfred and talk over her head to really say anything to her, and then she went back home and it all was over.

In another world, William Earle walked over to Bruce Wayne on the day of his parents' funeral, a paternal hand on the child's shoulders, and said, _We'll be watching the empire, it'll be waiting for you_; but in this world Beth Wayne is a girl, and no sane businessman would ever think of promising a multi-billion corporation to a girl, and why should she even _want_ it anyways?

In this world Beth Wayne is a girl, and no one really expects much from her, nothing but a good marriage and living up to her father's name and her mother's charitable efforts; she will grow up and be pretty and quiet in a corner, smiling in silence and waiting until it's her turn in the limelight at some ball, waiting for her husband at home, waiting for life to pass her by.

Beth Wayne is too damn stubborn for that, even if the world doesn't know it yet.

She gets kicked out her fancy boarding school when she's eleven, and it might be the first time she ever sees Alfred angry. Or the closest thing; she's starting to suspect British butlers never get angry.

"It's dull and boring and I hate it," she says, but they both know she'd hate Gotham even more, taking her lessons in the empty rooms of the Manor, or back in Gotham where they still have some kind of weird ceremony on the anniversary of her parent's death.

Gotham is a jealous mistress, and doesn't share; but then again, so is Beth.

* * *

Alfred sends her to Europe next; he would like some fancy school in England, but she refuses. Everyone knows all of the best schools in England are boys only, no matter what Alfred says. Had she been a boy, she would have gone to Eton, and maybe even allowed himself the luxury to walk away after a semester; but she is a girl, and goes to Germany instead.

(Alfred had tried to send her to Switzerland before that, but Beth liked the idea of Switzerland even less than she liked the idea of spending her days in England wishing she could go to a boys' school. _They have finishing schools in Switzerland, Alfred!_, she tells him horrified. _To teach stupid rich girl to sew and dance and be pretty for their husbands!_

She counts it as a success that he shakes his head and laughs.)

Beth goes to Germany, while she learns how to use eyeliner and bold red lipstick, the smell of cigarettes and the taste of beer; back on the East Coast in Connecticut for a while, in a place where all of her classmates are even snobbier than most of Gotham's high society; and ends up graduating from a school in Rhode Island a couple of years earlier than she should have, which was both a product of her dedication to excel and _show it_, and her teachers' own determination to send her away as soon as possible.

She even ends up in a small Catholic school in Wyoming for a semester, after some annoying lady from CPS shows concern at her changing school so often, and won't accept, _it's boring_ as an answer; and to Alfred's extreme amusement that semester is right in the middle of Beth's rebel phase, when she's wearing fluo pink tights under her checkered skirt and has her hair in a new cut with lots of layers.

That's also in the middle of her boys phase, when she goes with as many boys as she could to decide if really dating is all that is cracked up to be (it wasn't) and ends up with _really_ awkward spots on her clothes and a string of new nicknames. "You're a bit of a tramp, aren't you?" An ex-boyfriend tells her when she won't go out with him again, loud and clear for the whole school to hear, and that's when Beth realizes that she doesn't much care for external opinions, and that life's easier when you're a boy.

Not that she cares, mind you. Elizabeth Wayne thrives on challenges, thankyouverymuch.

She interns at WE the summer of her graduation because This Is The Way Things Are Always Done, and also because the company is all she's left of her family, it's a very interesting place and she actually enjoys working there; or so she thinks, until her first day when she finds out she's stuck in some remote corner of PR because some stuffy old idiot thinks that spending hours gossiping and forwarding emails is the kind of thing a girl should enjoy.

Beth goes to Earle and the next day gets moved over to Legal, bringing coffee and photocopies and learning all sort of dirty jokes on the way, and also that some lawyers actually have a soul, as Phil Sanders from the Corporate office reminds her every day. Some, not all.

Summer ends and it's almost Beth's birthday, again, and she makes certain that her new car matches her the color of her favorite lipstick. In another world, that car is two shades brighter and ends up plastered against a tree, in a well-publicized DUI that is main reason why Bruce Wayne gets kicked out of Harvard, about eight months in; that, and the underage drinking. In this world Beth looks every bit as young as she is and no one in their right mind would ever sell her alcohol in school, but all in all is for the best because she really likes her new car.

She still manages to get drunk on that April weekend, though.

Some things are just inevitable.

Beth makes her debut into Gotham's society on a warm spring evening, wearing a golden dress and on Tom Elliot's arm, all dolled up to be stared at. She makes polite jokes and laughs when she's supposed to and looks the other way when every other girl is escorted by a beaming father, because it's just some stupid old tradition, and she tries to picture the face of the esteemed guests had she asked Alfred to be her escort. He would have refused, English property and everything but, a girl can dream.

She dances with Tom and his friends and people she hasn't seen in ages, and it's oh-so-fun to see how they all take turns to be with her; and, if she closes her eyes, Beth can almost believe it's really her and not her money they're all after, that this won't be her life day after day, party after party, some pretty useless arm candy.

This is when she gets drunk, and it feels good enough. Better.

Even worth the hangover, almost.

She might still be a bit drunk when she gets back to school the following morning, because the first thing she does is making an appointment to drop all of her cool-and-useless science classes. She picks business, as cold and dull as it is, because she's good at and will give her some credit, some respect. She even stops dating, remembering the faces of the matchmating mamas at the ball as she danced with their sons, one by one; and that's when Beth decides that she'll only go out with boys who don't speak English, just to be on the safe side.

Good thing she likes Europe so much, then.

* * *

The next years are every bit as dull as she expected, nine months of classes, two months pushing coffee carts in Accounting and sorting papers in Human Resources, the spare month spent traveling here and there. Beth speaks three languages by the time she's twenty, and that's when she starts deciding what to do with the rest of her life.

She would never want to be a doctor, not like her father was; she knows herself too well for that, too scared at thought of ever losing a patient, she would make an incredibly shitty doctor. Going to work for WE, sure, eventually, but not right now. Rachel's in Law School at Gotham U last she's heard, and she can't stop talking of how she has dreams, how she's going to save the world. Beth considers the idea, almost reject it, puts it away for later use. Then she toys a little with the idea of leaving Gotham for good, but even as she thinks of it inside her head she feels stupid, because the whole world knows that Wayne is Gotham; and once Gotham sinks her claws in you, she never lets you go.

But then Rachel call her one night and tells her they're letting out Joe Chill on early parole, and nothing really matters anymore.

* * *

In the world where Bruce Wayne is a boy he's every bit as arrogant and stupid as it's expected of him, a quiet, bright boy with a big heart and even a bigger chip on his shoulders, blind to everything but his own pain and rage.

In that other universe where there's a Beth instead of a Bruce she's every bit as smart, quiet, and damaged. She's every bit as arrogant as well, because she's had people telling her whole life that she's a Wayne for fuck's sake, and if she has to be hounded by stupid people because of it she might as well enjoy the perks.

Point is, on that day at the courtroom Bruce Wayne goes in with a gun inside his pocket, shivering all the while, and Beth Wayne doesn't, but she wishes she had. Well, not a _gun, _becauseshe's not an idiot and has learned the art of subtlety early enough, at that Catholic school where they called her a tramp, and _really_ doesn't want to go to prison in fucking _Gotham City_; as light as the sentence would be, with her name it would be a death sentence.

Still, she hates Chill with the intensity of a thousand suns. Even if she's open-minded enough to see that he was just a tool, she reserves her godgiven right as a human being to be selfish and vengeful, thank you; and when the fake journalist shots the man right in front of her eyes it feels a little like that divine justice she keeps hearing about.

Beth goes home feeling like a horrible little shit, and loving every minute of it.

Because Beth Wayne was smart enough not to get kicked out of Harvard first year, she finished school and moved back to Gotham by the time Joe Chill got paroled and killed on the same day; a small enough detail, that translated in her having her own car and not needing a ride from Rachel. Which was all for the best, really, because Beth Wayne is as straight as they come, as unfashionable as that is nowadays, and never had any kind of crush on Rachel, which made their fights much more vicious than they would have been under different circumstances; had they fought that day, their friendship would never have recovered.

Beth Wayne was smart enough not to get kicked out of school first year and got to keep Rachel as a friend in exchange. She never took a ride in the Narrows and never got to meet Carmine Falcone, and that night she went to sleep in her own bed instead of some damp, smelly ship.

That's not to say that she never went soul-searching in fucking Nepal of all places, because she did.

It might just be destiny.

* * *

It goes like this: had she really got on that ship and went gallivanting for the dark corners of the world, Beth would probably have ended up with her throat slit in some alley sooner or later; and it was a good thing that she had learned how to pass off as a man by the time she made it to central Africa.

What happens is that she turns twenty-one and doesn't really feel anything different at all. Besides getting access to a trust fund, that's it, and even more admirers; and this is how Elizabeth Wayne leaves Gotham, taking care to let people know she's leaving first and picking up her destination in advance instead that just sneaking in on a ship and hoping for the best.

She takes a fake passport and fifty dollars, and things pretty much stays the same; in the end it is still soul-searching, she just doesn't know it yet.

Beth had never really meant to pay particular attention to the criminal underworld, but things change after meeting Ricardo, who's handsome and charming and sells marijuana for a living; they are together two months until he get shot in the forehead. Beth leaves Brazil for Russia then, and graduates from pocket-picker to actual thief by the time she gets to Ukraine. Every once in a while she skips meals for a day or two and scrapes together the money she needs to send Alfred a message, to some mail box in Beijing or Moscow or Nairobi, because she never has enough to send anything all the way to Gotham.

Another thing that changes is that Beth never ends up in prison, because, for all the efforts she put into trying to pass out as a man she's not above offering some Bhutanese cop sex in exchange for her freedom. Is what would happen anyway in prison, she knows, and lets herself be brought in some corner and waits until is the right moment to escape, and she's more surprised than relieved when she actually manages. It is, above any doubts, the luckiest strike of luck she's had her whole life, and the reason why Henri Ducard never finds her in prison.

He finds her much sooner than that.

Beth likes the monastery well enough, how is the most quiet place she's ever seen and how the League's style of combat suits her better than anything she's ever tried; and Henri himself is an unexpected beacon of civilization, smart without a doubt and even fun when the situation calls for it. They become friendly with one another soon enough and, on the day he tells her about his wife, Beth finds herself kissing him. It doesn't really mean anything, but it feels good; good and warm.

Maybe she is lonely.

There is no plan in act for destroying Gotham to save her, not yet, and no one to force Beth's hand when the moments comes. She does her kill easily enough and bid Henri goodbye, a full member of the League of Shadows, fully expecting to be called on soon. Beth calls Alfred as soon as she gets and makes the whole plane trip in silence, thinking. For all her travels she has no ideas yet, no moral compass, no mission to guide her.

Bruce Wayne doesn't kill people; Beth, for her part, is still working on it.

It's winter in Gotham when she arrives, the winter of her twenty-sixth birthday, and yet she feels as though she'd left a lifetime ago. WE is still private when she comes back, and she really has no reason to go ask Eagle for a job but she does it anyway, figuring that it's too late to go to Law School; that ship has sailed. Lawyers don't kill people, don't they?

Because WE is still private than Bill Earle really has no reason to stick the girl who's kind of his boss down in Applied Sciences, and she really has no reason to ask, but Lucius Fox is still not troublesome enough to be shipped downstairs, and he and Beth got to meet up in the executive floors.

Lucius Fox really likes Beth Wayne; it must be another of those things that always stay the same.

* * *

At age twenty-six and a half Elizabeth Wayne still wears bright red lipstick, no matter what the current trend is, and she still wears her hair artfully messy with a lot of layers like she did back in that dreadful Catholic school. She would even wear bright pink tights and Mary Jane's if she could get away with it at work, but she settles for pantsuits more often than not; because any kind of shirt with her coloring makes her look like Snow White, and she _hates_ fucking Snow White with all her heart.

Beth keeps going on her own to all the social functions she's invited to, and desperately wishes Rachel were male so she'd be covered for the season; she never manages a full night's sleeps because she's never tired enough, and has gym equipment brought inside the Manor to practice with.

She is twenty-six and a half, and the sum total of her life amounts to the fact that she's rich and famous and a tragic figure; that she's been born a girl when her parents would have wanted a boy, but they loved her all the same; and that she managed to avoid public drinking enough to graduate university before going wandering for the world and joining some sort of assassins' league, because she's a ruthless bastard who couldn't muster remorse when Joe Chill died, and killed another guy on top of that. Her longest relationship to date was with a professional killer, and still Lucius Fox somehow likes her. What does this say about Elizabeth Wayne?

In that universe where Thomas and Martha had a boy he was more of a brat, more of diva, with a reputation already when he decided to become a killer and ended up disappearing; and that's the universe where the Wayne heir grew up to become a contradictory mass of issues and self-loathing and _determination_ above all, a cold-blooded asshole and, undoubtedly, one of the best persons to ever live; the best protector Gotham could have wished for.

In this universe? Well, this universe gets a Dark Knight too because that is destiny, the thing that never, ever changes. This Gotham gets a Dark Knight too, a confused hero moving out of inertia, with floating morals and no real purpose nor direction.

A loose cannon; and everyone knows how those are the most dangerous of them all.

* * *

**A/N**: Because someone asked: Girl!Bruce is absolutely the same as Canon!Bruce except for, y'know, the sex. She isn't smarter, she just thinks she is, based on her own experience of people underestimating her; she is every bit as bratty and self-absorbed as as pre-canon Bruce, both of them too caught up with their own problems to really pay attention to the rest of the world. Beth's just more socially sensible and better at playing with others, but since she never had her eyes open she lacks any moral compass whatsoever, which will end up biting her in the ass if I ever write more of this.  
Thanks to Star StreakedSky for asking and prompting me to explain!


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